Mental Health Trusts: They Installed A Board Of Trustees To Oversee It

Rent money -that all goes ward programs that find out if there wouldn’t be another dissipation of the Trust in the future. In the 1994 settlement, the state reconstituted the original onemillion acres with mostly new land and added $ 200 million to ‘reestablish’ the Trust.

They installed a board of trustees to oversee it.

The land was managed by the Trust Land Office at the Department of Natural Resources.

Now look, the cash principal was invested by the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation. Programs range from job training for young people with disabilities to detox centers to criminal justice reform. Anyways, look, there’re tens of thousands of people in Alaska who rely on Trust funds. Healing Faces is just one of hundreds of projects made possible by the Trust. Auditors will look into everything from the legality of the Trust’s financial management, to potential open meetings act violations, if lawmakers act. Representative Mike Hawker is requesting an audit, and the Legislative Budget and Audit Committee will make a decision at its December 13 meeting. Trust Authority CFO Kevin Buckland said $ 17 million was spent on an office building in Washington state in Another $ 9 million went to property in Texas this past summer. Did you know that the board also passed a resolution to spend $ 2 million to try to develop a mine at Icy Cape, near Yakutat in Southeast Alaska.

I know that the Mental Health Trust has a complicated history.

a bunch of people sued the state.

By 1982, dozens of that land trust was whittled away -given to municipalities and individuals -and little money was being spent on mental health. Onemillion acres were set aside to be used by the AlaskaLegislature to fund a comprehensive mental health care system, when it was first established in 1956 by Congress. Just think for a moment. Volland represented amid the plaintiffs. Jones and Board chair Russ Webb both said they are legally allowed to use the principal to buy land and invest it as they choose. They will not provide copies of written legal counsel explaining their authority, could not cite specific statutes or regulations and should not allow their attorney to speak on the matter.

So, that’s not where the money has gone, since ctober 2008.

For eightyears, members of the Board of Trustees have voted to suspend transfers of the principal to the Permanent Fund and instead are investing and managing it themselves.

That includes buying $ 39 million worth of real estate. William Foster stood in Bean’s Cafe late last week sifting through a pile of ceramic ornaments he helped design, hereafter pulled one his pocket out. It’s a well it was an image of a raven pressed into clay and painted a deep greyish. Remember, because it reminds him of his late mother, he carries it with him everywhere, he said. While looking out for the state’s interests, bruce Botelho was the Attorney General back in 1994 and was sitting on the opposite side of the table from Volland.

Volland ain’t one person concerned about the legality of the Trust’s investments.

Botelho, Volland and others look for a special legislative audit of the Trust Authority, the Land Office and the Board of Trustees.

They say it’s up to legislature to decide if the Board’s actions are legal. Oftentimes botelho said they purposely separated the Trust’s money management from their land management in the course of the settlement, in part as long as the Permanent Fund was already managing money and doing it well. We saw little reason to duplicate that effort, he said. You should take it into account. Money generated by the investments and the land went into two different pots -some to be used for mental health programs, and the rest to be added to the principal and ‘reinvested’ by the Permanent Fund. Now look. Greg Jones is the new CEO of the Mental Health Trust Authority and a former executive director of the Trust Land Office.

He said the Trust Land Office is more nimble than the Permanent Fund and can bring in more money for the Trust.

Congress set up the Alaska Mental Health Trust in 1956 to be sure the state could provide mental health care programs to its residents far into the future.

Trust has had a tumultuous history, and now, some state leaders fear it gonna be in danger once more. Legislators are considering a special audit of the Trust and how the trustees are investing its money. Anyway, alaska statute reads the mental health trust fund shall be managed by the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation. It is phillip Volland, amid the lawyers who helped create the Trust, said that law is really straightforward.